Does Short-Term Debt Increase Vulnerability to Crisis? Evidence from the East Asian Financial Crisis

Does short-term debt increase vulnerability to financial crisis, or does short-term debt reflect – rather than cause – the incipient crisis? We study the role that short-term debt played in the collapse of the East Asian financial sector in 1997–1998. We alleviate concerns about the endogeneity of short-term debt by using long-term debt obligations that matured during the crisis. We find that debt obligations issued at least three years before the crisis had a negative, albeit sometimes insignificant, effect on the probability of failure. Our results are consistent with the view that short-term debt reflects, rather than causes, distress in financial institutions.